A site dedicated to G.K. Chesterton, his friends, and the writers he influenced: Belloc, Baring, Lewis, Tolkien, Dawson, Barfield, Knox, Muggeridge, and others.

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Suppression of Silence

Rob Woutat recently wrote about the 'Suppression of Silence':

It's getting harder to find music-free zones these days. Libraries have held out, and most doctors' offices, the state ferries, and so on. But Italian restaurants have long piped in "That's Amore" to trick us into believing we're in Italy, to make us feel we're having an authentic Italian experience, even it it's fabricated in part by red-and-white-checked table covers and the crooning of Dean Martin, that old Italian from Steubenville, Ohio. As British essayist G.K. Chesterton said, music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the musician.

My experience with doctors' offices is that they usually have a television blaring CNN, Fox News, or Cartoon Network. Woutat deals with blaring televisions in his article as well. I agree with Eric who proposes adding Noisiness to the list of capital sins. Yep, right after Lust.